


The Most Beautiful Woman of the Court

by wilkiecollins



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 00:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7485642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilkiecollins/pseuds/wilkiecollins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Philippe reflects upon his penchant for women's clothing. All relationships implied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Beautiful Woman of the Court

It was the time before Versailles; a happier time, when they were still, essentially, in retrospect, children. Louis did not yet think of himself as the sun around which all revolved. The dowager queen was alive, and ruling with an iron fist, to prevent them from having to do so. She referred to Philippe as her sweetest daughter, and Philippe was indulged, powdered, and dressed in a way he assumed was luxury and privilege, oblivious to the notion of emasculation as a weapon. For Philippe - so young; he had not yet been educated in the ways of a man’s body by the Cardinal’s nephew - femininity was power. It invigorated him, elevated him. The brush of powder to his nose, and the sweet dot of black above his mouth were his armour years before he picked up his first sword and knew the taste of the blood of battle. Later, a feather in his collar as he roared his cry from the front line would still be a badge of fury and a mark of strength. 

For those around him, the puppet masters he did not yet see behind stage, not yet aware he was on a stage at all, to strip Philippe of his masculinity was to remove the threat of any challenge to the throne. Philippe was too much like his uncle Gaston - he had his eyes, his mouth, his soft, lilting ways - and Gaston’s violence against his royal brother nearly destroyed everything. The dowager queen would not see history repeat itself. Philippe would be loved and cherished, raised alongside his brother - but he would not be taught the ways of politics, nor war, nor being a man at all. As Gaston had fled with his brother’s lover, Philippe would be kept away from the very scent of a woman. Louis would learn early, at the hands of a middle-aged prostitute with no aspirations towards social mobility, and without the working parts to produce an accidental heir. Philippe would learn only the taste of a man’s mouth, his training designed to keep him away from Louis’s queen, his mistresses, the women of his court - anything he deemed to be his own. 

The accoutrements of feathers and silks and high shoes Philippe thought to be gifts were to everyone else around him his chains, just short enough to stop short of the state’s throne.

But this was a happier time, an earlier time, when Philippe thought of himself as a boy, as a girl, as a son and as a daughter, as a brother, as beloved, as a lover of books and war stories, as opposed to a pawn in a machination so large he would only ever see its shadow. This is when Louis was his older brother, his glittering icon, his, his, his, as opposed to the glittering icon of the entire world as they knew it. Louis was not yet the people’s king - he was Philippe’s brother.

They lay in the gardens of Saint-Germain. There was a blanket laid out before them, but instead they lay in the grass, verdant and lush and dewy-cool against their hot, giggling faces. They had been playing some game, using sticks as swords, dirtying their stockings, their heels clogged with dirt. The head gardener had chided them, but gently - the children were the jewels of the court, their innocence relished for its brevity. Henriette, just a girl then (they had no idea what she would mean to them both, what she would give, what she would take) had retired for a nap, but they were both, in their own ways, still thinking of her glittering eyes.

“What do you think?” Philippe had asked, rolling onto his back and appreciating the tickle of grass against his neck.

“About what?”

“Henriette. Girls. Girls, generally.”

Louis laughed, his ‘I’m-so-much-older-than-you’ laugh, as if Philippe was still a child, as opposed to an adolescent on the brink of manhood. Philippe knew that Louis had already laid with the working woman. His brother had whispered of it from under his blankets in the dead of night as the room danced with candlelight. Louis had been frightened and unsure, yet when he spoke of it with the other boys of the court he was cocky, laughing, strutting. Philippe enjoyed the difference in his brother, feeling as though he had a special part of him, just for himself.

“I know when I am older, I shall have many of them,” Louis smirked, a jubilant light illuminating his blue eyes. “As many as I wish. Girls, from wall to wall. The most beautiful girls in all of Paris, in all of France - in all the world!”

Philippe frowned, “But. But, what makes them beautiful?”

Louis cocked his head at him in a way he had many a time, and would many a time more. It was the way anatomists looked at a new specimen they didn’t quite understand, like Philippe was the most worrying of objects. “Well -”

“Be specific. What would the most beautiful woman in all of Paris, all of France, all of the world look like?”

Louis, understanding the question and relishing the game, flopped backwards, chewing upon his pink lips. “Hm. Well. Give me a moment.”

And a moment they had, a silence filled by the birds in the high trees tweeting, and the soft vibration of chatter from inside the chateau.

“She will wear green!” Louis announced, and Philippe snorted back laughter.

“Okay. Green. Continue.”

“Her hair will be dark like chestnuts, and her eyes will be blue like the lake.”

“You want a woman who looks like our garden? Is your imagination so limited you’re just naming colours you can see?” Philippe chided, and Louis punched his leg.

“Do you want to know or not?” he huffed, and Philippe dearly wanted to know. “She will be tall and strong, a woman like a statue, with long legs wrapped in soft stockings. She will hold her head high, and ignore the pettiness of court,” he said softly, and Philippe wondered, later in life, in retrospect, whether Louis was already at that point more aware of the gossip and venom of courtly life than he had known.

“She will be ferocious. Not one of those soft, giggling things,” and Philippe quite thought there wasn’t anything wrong with soft, giggling things at all, that all women were quite lovely, but as his brother spoke he realised their approaches to women may be quite altogether different...

“She will be a warrior woman. Like from the stories. But no one shall know but I, and to everyone else she will be the most magnificently dressed thing they had ever seen, with curls falling down, and a bright ruby at her throat.”

Philippe raised his eyebrows, “Quite specific,” he commented.

“Quite. But I’ll find her.”

Philippe reflected on their conversation as boys at multiple points during their later years. When he met Louis’s mistresses, his wife, the various mothers of the children of France, he would compare them to Louis’s juvenile descriptions. He wasn’t sure of the point of it - clearly Louis’s tastes had changed since he was a boy - but he thought there was an innocence and a playfulness in Louis’s embryonic romantic intentions that deserved to be preserved in some way, even if it were just through Philippe remembering. Sometimes Philippe thought that was his special power - when everyone in the world saw the swaggering, decadent King of France, Philippe saw a boy giggling in the grass who belonged wholly to him.

–

It was the time when they had moved to Versailles, and it was not a happy time at all. The hunting lodge was still a hunting lodge, and its walls rippled with the vibrations of communal claustraphobia, rage, fear, and confusion. The court were crammed like sardines into a jar, and their anxieties reverberated off of each other, amplifying, echoing, and Philippe was drowning in it. The pressures and expectations of society were infinite, and there was no retreat. There was no home, no rest, no bed of his own - only society, constantly, all the days of the week and all the hours of the day. Philippe no longer knew who he was, he knew only how he was with them. The Chevalier’s enthusiasm for it was, perhaps, the worst part. As Philippe drowned in the glitter of the court, the Chevalier floated above the surface, rising through the bubbles. What drained Philippe invigorated his lover. Their differences, while so frequently their strengths, had become a fish bone jammed in Philippe’s throat.

“Let’s play,” he said suddenly one afternoon, flinging a book by his side. The Chevalier turned form his spot staring across the grounds through their high bedroom window, his hands clasped behind his back, his silhouette the most magnificent thing against the light. A smile tugged at the Chevalier’s mouth.

“My, I do love it when you get that look,” he said, crawling onto the bed. “What shall we play?”

Philippe slapped away his wandering fingers, “We’re going to dress up,” he said pointedly, pushing at his lover’s chest as the man leaned into him, tickling his face with his hair.  
“Putting more clothes on was not what I anticipated…”

“Tough. We, my darling, are going to play at being princesses.”

–

Philippe never thought he could feel again the way he felt as a child, but the moment he slipped his foot into the soft, silk stockings, he felt something in his chest burst. The tight, swollen thing that had been making it hard to breathe popped like a soap bubble, and the lung-full of air was salvation. He stared at himself in the tall Venetian mirror, at the dark curls falling about his pale, powdered face, while painting his mouth into a red heart.

“You know I’ve never had a thing for the fairer sex,” his lover whispered from behind him, watching him from behind his shoulder. “But for you,” the Chevalier grabbed his hips, grinding against the arse encased behind bustles and skirts, “I could make an exception.”

Philippe smiled, and asked the Chevalier to help his fasten the red ruby to his throat. It contrasted vividly against the soft, mossy green of his elaborate gown, embroidered across the chest with threads of gold.

He admired himself, like a completed project. He felt the same feeling he felt when finishing a particularly arduous book, or a sketch. He felt like an artist looking upon his own creation, while knowing he was not his own creation at all. He had simply fashioned his brother’s ideas into a reality, in a way he had always longed to do, and in a way he was forbidden from doing. Louis, the Sun King, the state, the vassal of God, would not allow his own brother to bring his dreams to light, to exercise his plans, to make the vision of France he had within his mind a reality. Philippe wanted to prove to him that he could, and the reason he could was because he knew him better than anyone. More than anyone ever had or anyone ever could. Philippe remembered the giggling boy in the gardens of Saint-Germain before he became the axis upon which the world turned, and he longed to remind his brother of that. To show Louis that he could be whatever Louis needed him to be - because telling certainly wasn’t helping.

–

His eyes searched for his brother’s as he strode into the centre of the gathering, his painted head held high, feeling the tickle of his hair against the solid line of his jaw. The Chevalier clutched at his hand a little tighter than he would have expected, holding it high as he would a woman’s, rather than linking arms as was proper for men (perhaps the only thing they did that was seen as proper for men at all…)

The stunned silence welcomed him more fully, and more utterly affirmed his choice, than any round of applause could manage. Philippe was never one to seek approval, because he knew he would never have it. His entire life had been orchestrated to deflect any approval he may have received unto his brother. He was like the Venetian mirror, reflecting the King’s glory back unto him. And because Phillipe knew he could never impress, he instead stood to shock, to surprise - to horrify. It made him a formidable force on the field, and a terrifying military strategist. And in this moment, it made him the most haunting, grotesquely beautiful woman to set foot in Versailles. Yet his brother was not here to see the warrior woman, her body carved of marble, dressed in green, with the bright blue eyes and the ruby at her throat, the figment of their dreaming youth. And Philippe convinced himself that it was rage at his critics that had his bejewelled fists colliding with face and gut and ribs, rather than his frustration at his brother’s absence. At least Louis would now have to see him. If the King would not come to see his parade, he would have to have himself reported to the King.

—

Louis sat before him, and the only acknowledgement of Philippe’s efforts was a twitch of a brow. He tore off his shoes, one after the other, flinging them at the floor, his body shaking in its crinolines and corsets. “I can no longer be here!” he roared, pulling off his rings, throwing each one - worth more than most houses in Paris - to the floorboards, one by one. “I can no longer do this, brother. I cannot be with these people. I do not know who I am! Why am I here? What purpose do I serve? You will not let me be a soldier, you will not let me be a diplomat - you barely allow me to be a brother! - What is my role in your court, my King?” he hissed, his jaw painfully tight, his muscles clenching as he ripped the jade green sash from around his waist.

Louis watched his brother strip off the accoutrements of womanhood with the most bothersome mixture of unsurprised apathy and vaguely impressed curiosity. “You are here because I wish you to be,” he explained simply, watching Philippe rip the collar of the dress from its stitching.

“Why?” Philippe demanded, the frustration bubbling from his mouth like bile, “You will not give me power, you will not allow me into the realms of politics or diplomacy or military thought, so what purpose do I serve?” he demanded, marching towards his brother, watching the darkness glint through his eyes, “Would you like me to take up gardening, brother?” he barked, with bitter humour, “Shall I plant the King’s orange trees? Lay his tables? I thought, for today, I would be one of the ladies of the court,” he spat, tearing at his cuffs before beginning to unlace the front of his dress with shaking fingers, “If I cannot help, perhaps I can ornament! Does it please the King to look upon me?” he demanded, and Louis looked away. Philippe grabbed his face, his skin soft in his trembling hand, forcing him to look at him. “Does it please the King? This is what you wanted, is it not? The most beautiful women in the world, wall to wall,” his voice dropped, and recognition glimmered in his brother’s eyes. “Have you achieved your goals? Because you clearly want them more than a brother who could serve you, could win your wars, could tread where you could not.” Philippe’s eyes glinted, and he squeezed his brother’s jaw harder, feeling his rapid breath on his face.

“Clearly you do not want a brother,” he growled, forcing his body against the King’s, “So how about another mistress?”

Louis struggled in his grasp, but he was smaller, weaker. Where Louis had played at being King, Philippe had grown up dreaming of being a soldier, and his mother had allowed him to train as long as it kept him away from his brother’s women and his brother’s throne. He used his strength against his older brother, against his ruler, holding him close and breathing hard in his face, “At least then I could satisfy you, Sire, because God knows nothing else I do does!” Louis fought in his arms and pushed him away with a strength Philippe didn’t expect, his eyes glistening, his face red, and his breathing coming in harsh gasps. “Out!” he panted, gesturing wildly at the door, and Philippe obeyed, thinking himself the first beautiful woman the King had ever rejected. At least he would go down in history in some way.

—

When he got to his room, his skin flushed and sticky, his clothes half hanging off of him, the most expensive gown in Paris transformed to rags, like some midnight Cinderella, the last person he expected to see was a raging Henriette. Her eyes glinted, and his rolled.

“Do you live to humiliate me?” she whispered, her voice a high, sharp pain in his brain.

“I did not think of you,” he admitted bluntly, meaning it to hurt, but also entirely telling the truth. It was not her eyes he was searching for.

“I am your wife. Did you not think that parading in this way through the court would reflect badly upon me?” she asked, and he hated her sweetness, hated her patience, hated the way her voice was more begging than angry. She was not raging, she was hurt, by a man she did not see as a husband, but one who had been a friend for longer than she had known herself.

“I know you do not love me but -”

“I do love you,” he interrupted, suddenly deflated, all of his furious energies melting from his body, and he sagged like an old sheet. He walked over to her - she was so small, even without wearing his heels - and grasped her hands, tiny in his own.

“Like a sister,” she added, looking up into his eyes, her own like the richest chocolate, her face the same face he had wondered at as a boy, but with an affection more than a lust. He pulled her blonde head to his unlaced chest, and felt her hot, embarrassed tears drip down into the ribs of his corset.

“Yes,” he said, admitting the unspoken thing, the thing only they discussed. Henriette and Louis had their secret love, but Henriette and Philippe had their secret conversations, like children at a sleep over. They would stay up all night by candlelight and reflect upon their relative positions. Both knew fully that they were chess pieces in the King’s game. Neither had had any illusions as to their feelings for each other, but the harshness of the King had made them both kind, like water softening the edges of pebbles on the beach. They had agreed so long ago to make this easy for each other, to be gentle with each other’s pain, to respect each other’s boundaries. They had to be married, but they did not have to be enemies. They were both trapped in this prison, and it made sense to provide each other with warmth rather than venom. Philippe had broken the contract by embarrassing his wife, and he softly kissed the top of her head.

“You love your wife like a sister,” she repeated, with a soft, sad giggle, wet from tears. “How funny.”

“Funny?” he asked, stroking her back, swaying from side to side in an embrace of old friends.

“Since you love your brother like a wife,” she whispered into his chest, and he could feel her hold her breath, feel the terror that gripped her as the words slipped out. He froze, his arms suddenly tight around her, though if he could hold her tight enough the words would never leave them, never leave this room, never reach the gossiping, spiteful voices that stuck around them like spiderwebs.

“He is your brother too,” Philippe reminded her, and while he instantly hated himself for evoking the rules and remnants and definitions of Catholicism - incest applied to family by marriage, too, was punished just as harshly, was viewed just as coldly - it made her body go slack.

“Yes,” she said, looking up at him, her lashes wet and shining. She sighed through her nose, and walked around him, beginning to unclip his skirts from his waist, “And you do make a beautiful sister, husband of mine.”

Philippe smiled, and cast his gaze to the floor, grateful that there was one person in his life for whom he did not have to dress up.


End file.
